


Saturday, 8:00pm

by birdinthebeehive



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Unconsummated Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1564463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdinthebeehive/pseuds/birdinthebeehive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hasn't been a dance hall for a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NBvagabond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NBvagabond/gifts).



> written in one stream-of-consciousness splurge while milklegsinthetardis.tumblr.com and I were rewatching Captain America: The First Avenger. 
> 
> I blame you for this, kiddo.

It hasn’t been a dance hall for a long time. He has to remind himself that they don’t even have dance halls like they used to. This one limped along for a while, but then it too fell out of fashion like most everything from that time. It stood empty for a good long spell after that, before being taken over by a string of failed ventures - a dirty cinema, a makeshift clinic, even a shelter for the city’s disadvantaged youth. He feels glad about that last one. 

Eventually the property was bought by a company that wanted to build another of their soda-processing plants on the site, but the deal fell through after the building was demolished - he doesn’t know the details, he doesn’t much care - and it’s nothing but rubble in a empty lot now. It’s been that way for years. But he keeps coming back. He has to. He made a promise. 

He can’t get there every week. Sometimes he’s out on a mission, sometimes the team needs him elsewhere for PR work that never seems to end. Some days, it feels just like those early days, when he felt like little more than a cheesy grin and a hokey costume and a poster boy for Uncle Sam, in a body that still feels too big. He knows the work is important; he just can’t always bring himself to care. But whenever he’s in town on the right day and at the right time, he comes here. He made a promise. It’s not the Stork Club anymore; in a lot of ways, she’s not even really Peggy anymore. But it’s Saturday, 8:00pm, and he wouldn’t dare be late.


	2. Chapter 2

He stands on the quiet corner in his freshly pressed shirt and his freshly polished shoes and he closes his eyes for a moment and he hears the band play something slow, just like he asked, and he makes sure he doesn’t once step on her toes as his best girl teaches him to dance. He stands there until the night grows cold around him and the people passing by throw him odd looks, at the almost-recognisable man standing on the corner of an abandoned lot with an old WW11-era compass in his hand and the light of a life he never got to live flickering in his eyes. 

 At last he turns to go, to head back to the life that he does live, the life that he tries every day to be grateful for. He wonders if she ever forgave him. He knows it’s pointless, but he wonders anyway. He’ll never know that after the war was over, when these streets were filled with the celebrations of victory, when he lay sleeping in the ice, she stood here too, every Saturday at 8:00pm, and the band played something slow, and he never once did step on her toes.


End file.
